Ten Questions to Refine Your Successful Marketing Plan

Stack of cards labeled with question marks

Is the right message reaching the right audience?

By August J. Aquila
Price It Right: How to Value Accounting Services

The main reason most marketing programs don’t work is that not enough time is spent up front in the planning stage. Marketing, like anything else, takes careful planning as well as execution. I’m going to propose 10 key questions that you need to answer before embarking on your next marketing program.

MORE: ‘Sales’ Is Not a Four-Letter Word | Three Pillars Support a Successful Accounting Firm | Clients Have Six Reasons for Needing You | Six Ways to Market Your Technology Consulting Practice | Sixteen Marketing Activities to Try | The Four Steps of Your Personal Marketing Process | How Does Your Firm Measure Up? | Six Questions Before Asking for All the Referrals You Deserve | Five Rules for a Marketing Orientation | Ten Keys to Marketing Success
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  1. What one purpose do you want to accomplish? Too often, accountants begin a marketing program without really knowing what they want to accomplish. Sometimes there are so many things they want to do that it becomes unrealistic to achieve all of them. The result is confusion and dissatisfaction.

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Five Questions for Grading Prospects

pipeline in shape of a dollar sign

Remember, a list is not a pipeline.

By Martin Bissett
Business Development on a Budget

So you’ve done all the work to get yourself composed and prepared to go out and generate new opportunities, find new business and new clients. Now what? How will you know who to contact for the first step?

Answer: your pipeline.

MORE: Be Clear About Your ROI Proposition | Keep Business Development Going During Busy Season | Walk the Commitment Walk | Two Steps Toward Mastering Selling | Thirteen Ways to Show Commitment | Clients Can’t Grow without You | Seven Mistakes in Winning New Fees | How to Develop Your Communication Abilities | Five Questions for Measuring Partner Potential | Five Ways to Rally Your Firm to Its Culture | When Would-Be Partners Aren’t Candidates | Make Your Expertise a New-Client Magnet | Don’t Think of It as Selling
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Many partners think they have a pipeline, but they don’t. What they actually have is just a list of prospects they’ve

  • met with,
  • would like to meet with or
  • have worked with in the past.

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Eight Steps to Putting Back Office Support into Place

three young people talking in an office

Includes details for the Client Operations Manual.

By Penny Breslin
It’s Not Just the Numbers

Moving from compliance to reliance services is not an easy task. If you are feeling a bit overwhelmed at this point, that’s okay. However, the joy of offering back office support (BOS) services and working closely with clients to help them meet their goals is well worth the effort. Having a strong team, clear procedures and technology that works for you are the building blocks that allow you to succeed in this endeavor.

MORE: After You Check Your Cybersecurity, Help Others | Cover These Five Areas of Information Security | Three Examples: Pricing Your BOS Value Add | Use Timesheets for Productivity, Not Billing | Revisit Your Back Office Support Procedures | Federated Search: What It Is, Why It Matters | Accounting Tech Tools to Minimize Your Pain | Do Your Apps Play Well with Others? | It’s OK to Have Favorite Clients | Ten Questions for Teamwork | Yes, You Can Be an Outsourcer
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The next layer is the clients – meeting with them, working with them and setting up the procedures to ensure that you are truly their advisor. When you carefully select your clients, take the time to understand their needs and goals, and hold them to a paperless work environment, both your team and clients will reap the rewards.
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Five Crucial Attributes for Successful Audit Leadership

As CPAs, we exercise due professional care in all we do. When we perform audits, the bar is higher.

By Alan Anderson, CPA
Transforming Audit for the Future

In my work with auditors around the country, and as I’ve thought about where audit is headed, I’ve developed a framework of five key attributes of successful leadership for audit. If we focus on these five attributes, I truly believe we can transform audit from the checklist exercise that it’s becoming into a service that genuinely adds value to our clients.

MORE: Traditional Audits Don’t Deserve Premium Billing | Four Basic Understandings Every Auditor Must Master | Put the Ethics Code to Work for Your Clients and Your Firm | Turning Audit & Accounting into Assurance & Advisory | WANTED: Great Audit Mentors | Is Audit in Crisis Because of Definitions? | Stop Sending the Wrong Message to Audit Teams | Closing the Audit Expectations Gap
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Let’s look at each of these five crucial attributes of successful audit leadership:

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After You Check Your Cybersecurity, Help Others

Make it a client service option.

By Penny Breslin
It’s Not Just the Numbers

In 2020, like many businesses, we went remote. My remote team of excellent ladies in Chennai, India, had to go even more remote than they already were. When India shut down, I figured I was out of business. We promise our cybersecurity is job number one to our accounting and financial firms. We have a highly controlled work environment, except for the day care and under 3’s occasionally looking for Mum. I did not think sending our employees home would work.

MORE: Cover These Five Areas of Information Security | Let Tech Make Communication Easier | How to Assess Needs for a Client Proposal | Best Practices for Source Doc Permissions and Handling | Every Back Office Support Client Needs a Playbook | Creating a Back Office Support Playbook | Strengthen Client Ties with Workflow Tools | Understand Your Online Marketing Options | Narrow Your Prospects by Choosing a Vertical | Build Your Team, Then Choose Your Clients | How Back Office Support Adds Value | AI Is Not Your Enemy
GoProCPA.comExclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

But thank the universe, many of our clients had no problem as long as we could figure out the security. They had been working with the same team of ladies. They saw them on Zoom and communicated daily on Slack. So, in 48 hours we went through an internal change to allow that to happen.
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Eight Steps to Getting Started with AI: A Guide for Tax Professionals

Overcome the ChatGPT AI learning curve. 

By Sandi Leyva and ChatGPT

In the fast-paced world of tax preparation and accounting, the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT can be a game-changer. However, the learning curve associated with these technologies can be a bit daunting, especially for technology immigrants in the Gen X, Boomer, and Silent generations (versus natives born after 1985).

Check out our courses on ChatGPT,
offered as a deep discount bundle or separately.
Webinar Schedule:
MORE ChaptGPT here

If you’re hesitant or short on time, here’s how to get started:

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